


soft trees break the fall

by callunavulgari



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Post - Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 18:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kairi was five years old, Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord.</p>
            </blockquote>





	soft trees break the fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neitzarr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neitzarr/gifts).



> Recently I saw a fanart of Kairi as Chihiro that made me want to rewrite my entire big bang. Instead of rewriting 43k of fic, I decided to try an old prompt from Neitzarr (KH/HP crossover) with Kairi as the main character, because I love her dearly and don't write her often enough.

When Kairi was five years old, Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord.  
  
She wouldn’t know that for another six years, because at five years old her biggest concern was getting a satisfactory on her spelling test and maybe convincing her dad to take her to Disney World.  
  
She was a late bloomer, her magic not manifesting until she was midway through fourth grade, when she made all the trees surrounding the playground burst into soft, fragrant pink petals. This was a problem because a) it was January and b) they were pine trees.  
  
It became something mysterious and cool to the fourth grade class of 2002, but to Kairi, it was the day that they got a visit from a very old man with a very pointy hat.  
  
The man with the angry eyebrows had a very poor dress sense, she thought, because he was wearing what looked to be an old flappers dress covered up by a cardigan. It didn’t hide the dress much though, and she sat beneath the kitchen table and watched the tassels shift against the old man’s knobby knees as he talked to her parents.  
  
“But how?” she remembered her mother asking, her father’s arm draped over her shoulder.   
  
The man had smiled, sort of, though it mostly looked like a grimace, and told them, “Magic is one of the great mysteries left in this universe. Even those of us who study it for all of our lives still cannot fathom how it works. Know though, that your daughter will, without a doubt, one day be a very special witch.”  
  
“Expect a letter in two and a half years,” he had left them with, and that was that, until the post arrived the day Kairi turned eleven.  
  
.  
  
The accident that claimed her parents lives happened when she was ten, so her grandmother was the one who accompanied her to Diagon Alley.  
  
“Why I never,” she’d said, gaping at the list they’d received with the invitation. “An _owl_?”  
  
“I think I’d rather have a cat,” Kairi had replied, her heart bumping up against her ribs like it wanted to make a break for it.  
  
.  
  
Hogwarts was hundreds of miles away from the little chain of islands where Kairi lived with her grandmother, and really, one of the American schools would have probably been closer, but her grandmother was insistent that she should experience a school closer to the place where she’d lived with her parents, so Hogwarts it was.  
  
She’d never seen a castle before, and spent the boat ride over gawking at the towers, marveling at the hundreds of shiny orange lights while the boys sharing her boat bickered in tiny, cracking voices. She did start paying attention when they almost capsized the little boat, but Hagrid, the hairy giant man with the booming voice, reached over and whacked both of them with a paddle before any of them ended up in the water. That was the end of that.  
  
.  
  
“GRYFFINDOR!” the smelly old hat hollered at last.  
  
She hadn’t enjoyed its lectures or the feel of it rooting around inside her skull. Bravery, loyalty, cleverness, and ambition were all apparently traits she had in abundance, so it had spent a distressingly long time trying to figure her out.  
  
 _I don’t mind_ , she’d thought at it. _I’m fine with any of them, really. Just pick one._  
  
So it had.   
  
.  
  
Classes were neat, and she especially liked flying lessons.  
  
She wasn’t very fond of charms or herbology, but she liked potions with Mr. Slughorn very much, even if he smelled faintly of mothballs.   
  
.  
  
As the only first year girl sorted into Gryffindor, things got lonely sometimes, shadows crawling in all corners of her big empty room. Sometimes at night she’d worry they were going to crawl right off of the floor and onto her bed, so she’d take her blanket down to the big armchair in the common room and sleep there, warmed by the fire.  
  
That was how she met Roxas, the sleepy-eyed boy with the messy blonde hair.  
  
“Do you always sleep down here?” she’d asked him the third night they found themselves settling down across from one another.   
  
He’d shaken the bangs out of his eyes and stared at her, like he was still half asleep, and just shrugged.  
  
Eventually, they’d taken to curling up on the same couch, him pillowing his head on her shoulder and breathing humid air onto her neck until she arranged them into a more comfortable position.  
  
.  
  
“It is weird that the two of you are the only Gryffindor firsties this year,” Axel told them over breakfast, mouth full of toast, crumbs scattered all over his scarf. “I mean, sure, we’ve had less students since the school got rebuilt, but we usually manage at least three or four. Now we just have you two.”  
  
Kairi carefully tipped honey into her oatmeal, saving a slice of bacon from missing Roxas’ mouth in the same movement. He gave her a sleepy, grateful look, and resumed eating.  
  
She said nothing of how many kids had been sorted into Hufflepuff that year, or how the aftermath of wartime tended to breed loyalty more than it did bravery.  
  
.  
  
She didn’t meet Sora until the week after the first quidditch match. She’d seen him, of course. She kept track of most of the first years, but she still thought of him as one of the jerks who had almost tipped over her boat, so she hadn’t felt the need to start a conversation.  
  
As it happened, Sora literally ran into her, just outside of the library, smacking painfully into her chin and knocking them both to the floor. Roxas, who’d been walking behind her, bent to help her up, smacking Sora in the head once he’d gotten her back to her feet.  
  
“You shouldn’t be running in the hallways,” he’d scolded, narrowing his eyes at the other boy.  
  
She had looked between them, puzzled. Roxas was quiet, quieter than little Namine over in Ravenclaw, and she’d barely ever heard him say more than a sentence to somebody that wasn’t her.   
  
“Sorry Roxas,” the other boy had said, immediately running off again.  
  
.  
  
“He’s my brother,” Roxas had explained afterward, when they were both curled up in front of the fire, working on their transfiguration homework.   
  
“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Kairi said, nibbling on the end of her quill and crossing out a sentence.   
  
“He’s in Hufflepuff,” was all Roxas would say, shrugging like it was that simple—like it was normal that she’d never seen them together in the Great Hall or in the hallways between classes. Maybe for them it was. You never knew with people.  
  
.  
  
Nothing of interest happens for the rest of the year, unless you count Saix turning Axel into a frog for a few days. Harry Potter is no longer a student, so the halls no longer whisper of danger at every turn, and Kairi goes home, unmaimed, Roxas and Axel sitting with her on the train ride home.  
  
“You don’t have anything better to do than hang out with us?” Roxas asks Axel as the train rattles along. She startles out of a half-doze against the window, blinking at both of them.  
  
It is kind of weird, now that she thinks about it, that Axel’s with them so much. Most third years don’t want anything to do with firsties, but Axel’s been with them since their third week, when he was the first one down to the common room and found them curled around each other and snoring.  
  
He’d woken them up gently _—time for breakfast, ickle firsties_ —and had been with them ever since.  
  
Axel shrugs, sprawling a little bit more across the seats. “You’re my pet projects,” he grins, and that’s that.  
  
.  
  
Summer passes slowly. Kairi spends a lot of time on the beach, making seashell charms and watching the gulls pass overhead.   
  
Her grandmother asks her about school, and Kairi can tell that she’s trying to understand, but it’s difficult to explain magic to someone who’s never experienced what it’s like to say a word and make a feather float. She fumbles for words and in the end she shrugs, a little smile curling around her lips, and says, “It’s magical.”  
  
.  
  
Roxas is waiting for her at King’s Cross, Sora at his side, and it’s the first time she’s really seen them together since that first time. She’d known they were twins, but she’s startled by how alike they look, watching them together.   
  
Sora is chattering animatedly to the woman next to them and the small affectionate smile on her lips makes Kairi squirm, discomfited by how much she misses her own mother.  
  
.  
  
She’d never been concerned with making friends. Last year she had Axel and Roxas, and that was fine with her. She liked them both well enough and wasn’t in any real hurry to replace them, but this time around friends fall into place like puzzle pieces.  
  
Selphie she meets in the corridor outside of the potion lab, the girl sniffling over a jar of ink, shattered on the flagstones. Kairi’s early and Roxas is at the infirmary getting pepper up potions shoved down his throat, and well, she just learned vanishing spells last week, so she cleans the spilt ink and lets Selphie borrow hers.  
  
Through Selphie she meets Tidus, and through Tidus she’s reintroduced to Wakka, the third year Gryffindor who always smiled hugely at her whenever she passed him in the common room.  
  
She befriends Sora over the Hufflepuff-Slytherin quidditch match and Roxas pointedly doesn’t talk to her until they both head down to the common room to sleep.  
  
“Why him though?” Roxas asks her sleepily, fingers curled into the sleeve of her sweater. It’s a cold October, frost already creeping across the windows, and the blankets just aren’t enough.  
  
She grunts a little, lacking even the energy to shrug, and mumbles, “It wasn’t really a choice. We just started talking.”  
  
He’s quiet for a minute, the crackle of the fire lulling her into a place between asleep and awake.   
  
“Just don’t forget me, okay?” he says finally and she snorts, half-heartedly ruffling his hair.   
  
“I won’t forget you, dummy.”  
  
.  
  
She meets Riku on a dreary November morning before breakfast. She’s halfway up the stairs to the owlery, squinting down at her shoes because everyone knows the steps are exceptionally cracked there, not quite as repaired as they should be, and they kind of bump into each other.  
  
For a moment she teeters on her step, panic unfurling in her chest, before he reaches out and steadies her.  
  
 _His eyes match his tie_ , she thinks.  
  
“Sorry,” he mumbles, brushing fine silvery hair out of his eyes. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”   
  
She smiles shyly at him, wrapping a wayward thread around her thumb and tucking her own hair behind her ear. “I wasn’t really looking either,” she says, and he smiles back.  
  
“Here, I’ll walk you up,” he suggests, offering his arm like some kind of a prince rather than a thirteen year old boy.  
  
He stays with her as she pens out her letter, making small talk as she ties the parchment to a surly barn owl’s leg.   
  
They walk down to the Great Hall together, idly chatting about coursework and whether or not third year is more difficult than second, and it isn’t until they reach the Gryffindor table that she realizes everyone’s gone quiet.  
  
She glances around, confused, but the faces that were upturned moments ago are looking anywhere but at them now. Riku quirks her a wry little smile that makes the corners around his eyes go all wrinkled and kisses her hand before making his way over to the Slytherin table.   
  
When she sits down Yuffie—the cheery fourth year who tags around after the Gryffindor quidditch captain and his Ravenclaw girlfriend—leans over and socks her in the arm. Kairi recoils, bumping into Axel’s side. “Don’t you know who that is?” Yuffie hisses, her dark eyes wide.  
  
“Uh, Riku?” she says, rubbing her arm. “I just met him on the way to the owlery. Why?”  
  
“His parents were supporters of Voldemort,” Yuffie whispers, her voice waspish and thin. “They came over from Japan about twenty years ago—rumor has it that their whole family dabbles in necromancy.”  
  
She blinks at Yuffie, glancing over her shoulder and finding Riku in the sea of faces. He’s sitting quietly at the Slytherin table, sipping daintily from a chipped mug. When he sees her looking he smiles.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” is all she says, shrugging and digging into the plate of scrambled eggs as Yuffie explodes into furious whispers across from her.  
  
She eats her breakfast in silence, ignoring the way the back of her neck prickles like someone’s watching her.  
  
.  
  
A month and a half later, Sora jinxes Riku in the corridor outside the charms classroom, and nobody really knows why until Roxas rolls his eyes later and says to her, “Riku was smiling at you.”  
  
Which is stupid because Riku’s nice and always smiles at her.  
  
“No, you don’t get it,” Roxas protests, voice mild. “Riku never smiles at anyone.”  
  
“He really doesn’t,” Axel says over his shoulder. He’s playing a game of chess with Aqua and is losing rather terribly.   
  
“But—” she starts.  
  
“No buts. Riku doesn’t talk to anyone. He talks to you. No doubt my idiot brother thinks he’s up to something.”  
  
Axel mumbles something unsavory under his breath that she can’t make out. Whatever it is, it makes Aqua snort so hard that she knocks over one of her pawns. It grouches at her, waggling it’s little stub legs in the air until she rights it again.  
  
“I don’t get it,” she grumbles.  
  
Aqua turns to her, one perfect powder blue eyebrow raised, and says, “Honey, they’re boys, no one gets it.”  
  
.  
  
When the school year ends this time around, both Sora and Riku promise to write to her. Roxas sighs and drags her off to one of the compartments on the far end of the train, occupied only by little Namine. Axel’s off with one of the people from his year for once, so it’s just them when Roxas says, “I don’t know how you put up with him.”  
  
“Who?” she asks, still trying to cram her bag somewhere where it won’t be in the way.  
  
“My brother,” he snorts and she looks up sharply. He’s scowling down at a tear in his jeans, not meeting her eyes.   
  
“Okay,” she growls through gritted teeth. “What is up with the two of you? I don’t get it.”  
  
Roxas’ scowl deepens. She watches as he sets his chin on his drawn up knees, still pointedly looking anywhere but at her. “We just don’t get along,” he says after a long moment. “We’re too different.”  
  
Kairi sighs, leaning over and taking him by the chin—making him look at her. “Look, I know he’s your brother and everything, but seriously, give him a chance. I’ll bet you two were like Mary Kate and Ashley when you were little—” At his odd look, she rolls her eyes. “Muggle thing. My point is, that whatever happened between you two, you should really try to work past it. You never know when something bad is going to happen.”  
  
She tries not to think of George Weasley running that joke shop in Diagon Alley, his smile always strained, perpetually looking over his shoulder like he’s waiting for someone to join in on the joke. It isn’t wartime anymore, sure, but bad stuff happens all the time.  
  
He sighs at her, tipping over until he’s leaned up against her shoulder, warm and smelling of the apple-cinnamon oatmeal he had for breakfast. “You’re always right,” he grouses.   
  
“Yup,” she beams and he smacks her, almost gentle, on the knee.  
  
“I’ll work on it, but no promises.”  
  
.  
  
“How was school?” her grandmother asks her at King’s Cross.  
  
Sora’s waving at her enthusiastically from across the platform, Roxas rolling his eyes beside his brother and sending her a quick, sloppy salute. If she squints, she can just barely make it Riku’s distinctive hair in the crowd. He’s turned away from her, talking to an older man with the same sweeping silver hair.   
  
“It was great,” she replies.  
  
.  
  
She does get letters that summer—long, intricate things in elaborate penmanship from Riku, short and sweet letters from Sora. From Roxas, she occasionally gets a clipping of the Daily Prophet or some snapshot he’s taken at home. Once, he sends her a picture of Axel flailing on some brick wall somewhere.  
  
She can’t bring herself not to be at least a little jealous that they live close enough to visit, but she doesn’t tell them that.  
  
 _We’ll have to visit you next summer_ , is the only thing Axel sends her, scrawled across some pamphlet advertising shrinking charms.  
  
.  
  
Selphie is the first person she sees once she gets through the wall onto the platform, and the other girl shrieks and leaps at her when she notices. Sometime over the summer, Selphie’s grown up a little bit. She’s stretched weird in places, all awkward ungainly angles, and has somehow managed to sell her soul for boobs.  
  
“Kairi!” she yells, nuzzling their cheeks together so enthusiastically that Kairi’s immediately concerned that they’re going to tip over.   
  
When Selphie pulls away, Kairi blinks, because Sora and Roxas are suddenly at her side and she has no idea when that happened.  
  
“Hey Kairi,” Sora says, grinning this bright, boyish smile that makes her heart immediately swell with affection.  
  
Roxas is giving her this look that makes her cheeks heat, like he knows exactly what’s going on in her brain. But when Sora turns to him and asks whether they can all sit together, Roxas smiles back and nods, so she figures that something good came of their conversation two months ago at least.  
  
.  
  
Axel finds them just after the trolley’s come by, when Sora’s cheerfully biting a head off of a chocolate frog.   
  
At fifteen, he’s stretched all weird too—his limbs almost too long for his body. Over break, he’s apparently tattooed his face because there are two tiny teardrops beneath his eyes, done in dark purple ink. There’s something strange about his smile, like it’s hurting him, so she doesn’t ask about the tattoos, just scoots closer to Roxas and pats the seat beside her.  
  
Their compartment is almost too loud, Sora and Selphie bickering over sweets and getting into mock duels, Selphie swinging her jump rope around like a whip until it ends with Roxas getting smacked in the eye.   
  
“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” Roxas mutters, blinking rapidly, moisture running down his cheek.   
  
Axel slides around her until he’s on the floor in front of Roxas, grinning up at him over Roxas’ knees. There’s a soft look in his eyes and his smile doesn’t look strained anymore, so she watches, fascinated, as Axel gently sets his hand on one of Roxas’ knees, using it as leverage to lean up into his space. He whispers something into Roxas’ ear as he taps his wand to the corner of Roxas’ eye, and well, the blush that explodes across Roxas’ face is pretty new too.  
  
.  
  
She opts for Divination and Ancient Runes instead of Care of Magical Creatures. Roxas makes faces at her, like he’s been utterly betrayed by this decision, and swans off with Sora in the opposite direction.  
  
Riku walks her to Ancient Runes, because he’s got some free time between Herbology and Arithmancy, and they talk quietly about their summers as the hallways come to life all around them.  
  
Riku tells her about his older brother Sephiroth, and how he’d barely been home all summer because he’d been made a head auror while Riku wasn’t looking. In turn, Kairi tells him about her grandmother and their little house on the beach. She tells him about the gulls and how the waves look in the midday sun and when she looks back up he’s got this wondrous look on his face, like he’s not sure if he should believe her or not.  
  
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” he mumbles when she asks about it.  
  
She bumps their shoulders together and grins, bright and sunny, and says, “Well, you’ll just have to visit me sometime.”  
  
When Roxas and Sora meet up with her in Divination later, they both scowl at her, covered in mud, weeds, and what looks like bird poop. She laughs at them, because sometimes they forget that they can actually do magic in the school, and vanishes the muck, politely refraining from telling them I told you so.  
  
.  
  
Halfway through the year Axel starts dating a pretty Ravenclaw in his year. She’s tall and clever with long legs and gorgeous eyes, but she’s really not a nice person. When most people gossip about Larxene, it’s usually to ponder why she wasn’t sorted into Slytherin. Rumor has it that she’s gotten into trouble multiple times for practicing dark spells—that she’s even used one of the Unforgivables.   
  
Kairi doesn’t make it a habit to listen to rumors, because Riku’s one of the nicest boys she knows and according to the rumor mill he was a death eater in the last war, even though he was six years old at the time of Voldemort’s death.   
  
She doesn’t pay attention to rumors, because they’re just that—rumors.   
  
She eyes Larxene at dinner one night—the way she’s got a possessive arm hooked around Axel’s shoulders, pressing a thumb into a dark bruise on his neck as he winces, and thinks that maybe this time the rumors aren’t entirely wrong.  
  
.  
  
The Larxene thing gets worse, mostly because of what it does to Roxas.  
  
He takes to slinking around the hallways, head down, shoulders hunched, and stops sleeping with her on their couch. At first she just thinks he’s getting weird about it. Any day they probably would have been separated anyway. The Gryffindor prefects tolerate a lot, but they aren’t frightened little firsties anymore, and most people don’t know what to think of two thirteen year olds sleeping together night after night.  
  
So she doesn’t pay much attention to it until he starts skipping class.  
  
She finds him down by the lake, tossing rocks at the giant squid.  
  
“You wanna talk about it?” she asks, plunking down next to him and brushing her hair out of her face. It’s getting long, growing out of the pixie cut she’s kept it in since she was seven. She’s been considering letting it grow though, so it gets into her eyes a lot.  
  
“Not really,” he mutters into his knees. She can just barely make out his eyes and forehead, the rest of his face obscured by his robes.   
  
“Is it about Axel?” she asks, because what else could it be. Axel’s absence sits in her chest funny too, like she’s missing a section of her heart. Roxas is silent, which is more telling than anything he could have said, so she nods. “Yeah, I thought so.”  
  
He explodes into movement, leaping to his feet and flailing his arms, glaring down at her like she’s the problem. “I just don’t get why he’d forget us like this,” he shouts, and she flinches, just a little, because Roxas has never shouted at her before. She remembers when one of the older kids had tried picking on her last year, how Roxas had jumped to her defense, shouting curses at the older boy—Axel joining the fray a moment later.  
  
“I don’t think he’s forgotten about us,” she shrugs, because she’s pretty sure he hasn’t. He might have started eating at the Ravenclaw table, but she still sees him glancing over at them every once in awhile, smile going brittle and fractured, like he’s sad but he doesn’t want to say anything.  
  
“He has,” Roxas insists. “He never talks to us anymore and we never see him, not even in the common room.”  
  
His voice cracks, crinkling like torn parchment, and she’s there to catch him when the anger fractures into grief.   
  
“I don’t want him to forget us,” he sobs into her shoulder, his breath hitching next to her ear. She strokes his back, watching the giant squid wave its tentacles lazily in the sunshine.   
  
“He won’t,” she breathes into his ear, her own heart aching like it’s been stepped on.  
  
.  
  
Axel breaks up with Larxene a week later, rejoining them at breakfast like nothing happened—like he wasn’t gone for weeks on end.   
  
Roxas looks surprised, slanting her suspicious glances over a jar of blueberry preserves.  
  
She quietly keeps eating, because really, she didn’t do anything. She just reminded Axel of something important.  
  
.  
  
She’d missed the first couple visits to Hogsmeade. Not on purpose, but something else was always happening. A study session with Selphie and Sora or a heaping of homework she needed to finish. The last time she’d stayed behind to help the new potions professor figure out Slughorn’s system. The new guy was a little creepy, she thought, but she liked potions, so she figured it wouldn’t hurt to get to know the new teacher.  
  
He was still pretty creepy and he was kind of a jerk, but she’d gotten extra credit, so she didn’t mind much.  
  
Riku’s supposed to take her, but Axel, Roxas, and Sora show up in the Three Broomsticks, and the day mostly turns into them drinking butterbeer and laughing together. She’s worried at first, because Sora and Riku don’t have the best track record of being in the same room together, but it doesn’t go half bad. They glare at each other when they think she isn’t looking and fight a bit over who gets to buy her her next butterbeer, but the fighting isn’t uncomfortable. It’s more like the way that Axel and Roxas bicker sometimes—grinning even as they pick on each other.  
  
“So, what are you gonna do about O.W.L.’s?” she asks Axel when Riku and Sora trek off to get the next round.   
  
He shrugs at her, which means he probably isn’t studying. “You really should study,” she presses. “It’s your future.”  
  
“Not really. NEWTs are what’s really important. But don’t worry about it, I’m studying.”  
  
“Promise!” he laughs when she gives him a dubious look.   
  
Roxas, previously hunched sleepily over his butterbeer, straightens up and blinks slowly at them, like he’s just come out of a dream. He grins, soft and slow, when Axel touches the tips of his fingers to the back of his neck, pressing into the touch like a lazy cat.  
  
It makes her heart skip a beat, the way they’re looking at each other—like there’s no one else in the room. It reminds her of her parents; sleepy movie nights where they exchanged looks like that over the tops of her head, laughing when she groaned at them. She would give anything to have them back with her, she thinks, watching the slow, wondering curl of Axel’s mouth.  
  
The moment is ruined by the return of Riku and Sora—Sora accidentally slopping butterbeer all over Roxas’ lap—making him startle away from Axel’s touch, his face almost comically surprised.  
  
They argue, loudly, as Axel and Kairi laugh behind their hands at the mess the two of them make, Riku looking on helplessly, like he’s not sure what to make of it all. Kairi tugs him down next to her and Axel, stealing one of the butterbeers he’s still holding and taking a long sip before passing it to Axel and commandeering the next one for herself.  
  
“Don’t mind them,” she tells Riku, giggling when Roxas tosses the rest of his butterbeer at Sora.   
  
Riku gives her a really weird look for a moment before he ends up shrugging and downing his butterbeer all in one gulp. Axel laughs and smacks him hard on the back, yelling, “Kid, you aren’t half bad.”  
  
She closes her eyes, letting the sounds of her friends wrap around her, cocooning her in happiness. She thinks about Axel’s pale fingers against the back of Roxas’ neck—blonde hair curling around his thumb like that part of Roxas wanted to keep that part of Axel there forever—about the soft smiles unfurling across their faces, and the newness of it all.  
  
Roxas stumbles into her side and when her eyes flutter open he’s blushing hard—half against her, half against Axel, caught between them like that’s where he belongs. He’s steadying himself against Axel’s shoulder, still too caught up in the argument with his brother to be properly paying attention, so she’s the only one who sees the bloom of heat burst to life in Axel’s eyes when Sora shoves Roxas; Roxas tumbling half onto Axel’s lap with a startled shout.  
  
It’s gone as quickly as it came, flickering out like a candle flame in the dark as Roxas laughs nervously and pushes himself back to his feet.  
  
 _Thirteen_ , she can almost hear him think, watching carefully as he withdraws back into himself.  
  
.  
  
Thirteen was the unluckiest of numbers in most cultures. Riku’s explained a bit about arithmancy to her, and though she doesn’t understand much of it, she knows that numbers have power. That they’re important. Seven is the most powerful of numbers and thirteen is unlucky. Most people don’t talk about the other numbers, but she thinks of Riku in the dim light of the astronomy tower, explaining to her that seven wasn’t the only powerful number.   
  
Three, he explained, had a unique power of it’s own.  
  
.  
  
She dreams that night. She dreams of an old man smirking cruelly down at a boy she only knows in passing—a Hufflepuff—the kid who trails around after Aqua and Terra like a little lost puppy. He’s older in her dream, dressed in armor, his face twisted into a hateful scowl. It’s a strange look, because she’s only ever seen him smiling.  
  
An older Aqua is fighting her way through a crowd of creatures that look half shadow, fury on her face and panic in her eyes.  
  
A blip and she’s watching Axel and Roxas sprawled in the green grass next to the lake, every line of their bodies in tune with each other. They kiss slowly, the afternoon sun catching in the gold of Roxas’ hair. She has time to watch the two of them smile, sweet and slow and aching, and then they’re in an unfamiliar alleyway, Roxas’ back turned on Axel as sorrow unfurls across the older boy’s face.  
  
She dreams of Sora and Riku, side by side, wands in hand as they face down some unknown danger. Selphie smiles at her, Wakka and Tidus at her side, and all at once, the three of them blink out of sight—drowned by the surging darkness.  
  
She sees herself, snarling something, her lips shaping a spell that she only knows from her defense textbooks.  
  
.  
  
She wakes screaming, Roxas wide-eyed and frightened beside her.  
  
“It’s only a nightmare,” she gasps, because she’s been in Divination long enough to know that her inner eye will never, ever open.  
  
“Only a nightmare,” she pants again, and retches all over the side of the couch.  
  
.  
  
She supposes she should have known better.  
  
Wars, after all, last for years. Peacetime is always so much shorter, because there will always be some bogeyman out there in the dark, waiting for the right moment to strike.  
  
.  
  
The summer she turns fourteen her island is swallowed up by darkness. Creatures scurry along the ground like crabs, like the nightmare creatures she used to dream of—shadows blooming up out of the floorboards, alive and hungry.  
  
They reach for her.  
  
She screams—  
  
.  
  
And then she sleeps.  
  
.  
  
She won’t find out about what happens next for quite some time. She isn’t aware enough to realize the moment Axel and Sora reach her side, dispatching the creature with a curse that flares painfully bright against the thick curtain of blackness. She’s sleeping when Riku offers Sora his hand, cloaked in shadows, and whispers, “Come with me.”  
  
She isn’t there for most of it, because her heart is wrapped up tight within Sora’s.  
  
She dreams of things that could have been—of Riku and Sora found kissing in the broom closets their fifth year, after the rivalry has worn away into something else. She dreams of Roxas and Axel walking along the shore of the lake, Roxas’ hand outstretched, waving to her. She dreams of so very many things—Aqua as head girl, little Namine sitting at the Gryffindor table with them; smiling.   
  
She dreams of Yuffie bouncing in place in front of a tall dark-haired boy, a scarf done in Gryffindor red wrapped around his Slytherin tie; of Squall and Rinoa, smiling at each other in front of an altar. She dreams of Cloud and Tifa sleeping in a field of white and yellow flowers, Zack and Aerith poking them with their wands.   
  
Then later, she dreams of herself, caught between Riku and Sora, laughing as they try to tug her in two direction at once. Eventually they give up and collapse into a pile together, her older self kissing both of them on their cheeks.  
  
She dreams and dreams, all the lives they could have had.  
  
.  
  
When she wakes, Sora is nowhere to be found and Riku is staring at her like he’s seen a ghost.   
  
He looks older, she thinks, and then he’s grimacing like he’s in pain.   
  
“Run,” he whispers, hand to his heart as his body starts to shine. His eyes glow, gold as the shadow nightmares, and it cuts to her core. “I’ll hold him back.”  
  
.  
  
She runs—runs and runs and runs—  
  
She runs straight into Axel as he’s rounding a corner.  
  
.  
  
She wonders if there was a prophecy made about this—about them. She learns about all the things she missed—about a world swallowed by darkness and a man filled to the brim with greed.  
  
Axel tells her everything, looking over his shoulder like he’s expecting an attack.  
  
“Where’s Roxas?” she asks, nervously twiddling her thumbs.  
  
She thinks of a dream she once had, and knows the answer before Axel’s face twists with grief.  
  
“He’s not dead,” Axel scrambles to tell her, like that’s supposed to be reassuring. She laughs, and it’s apparently not a happy sound because he tucks his wand behind his ear and gathers her to his chest, muttering soothingly, _I know, I know, hush, you’re all right._  
  
.  
  
“We need to find Sora,” he says later, when they’re sheltered in some kind of dilapidated church, like he knows something that she doesn’t. “And we need you to bring him back, the same way he brought you back.”  
  
She doesn’t know anything about that. All she has on her are dreams and memories, a body that’s sluggish, like it’s forgotten how to move. When he touches her arm though, her magic swells up inside her, all too happy to help.  
  
.  
  
She brings Sora back, words like destiny knocking about inside her skull, and is almost blinded by the intensity of his grin.  
  
.  
  
There’s still much they have to do. They have to find Roxas, rescue Riku from the fragment of soul that’s possessing him, and somehow, they have to figure out how to save the world. Her body is still waking up, her magic itching under her skin like a pipe’s backed up somewhere, and all she has to her name is her wand, which Axel saved for her, and two boys who don’t know much more about war than she does.  
  
It’s okay though. Seven may be the most powerful, and thirteen may be the most unlucky, but there’s power in threes.  
  
Once again she wonders if there’s a prophecy out there somewhere, a warning that they didn’t get in time.  
  
A shadow bursts to life beneath her feet and she strikes it down with a slash of light.   
  
She’ll worry about prophecies later.  
  
For now, she has to save her friends.  
  
.  
  
 _Seven lights, thirteen darknesses_ , an old man croaks.  
  
No one’s there to hear him.  
  
  



End file.
